“We don’t say yes or no to Israeli military operations; Israel is a sovereign country.”

— Secretary of State Rice, interview with Michael Allen, August 6, 2008

“The United States is at present opposed to any Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday. ‘The Americans are not ready to allow us to attack Iran,’ Barak told army radio.”

— Agence France-Presse, August 13, 2008

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When two nations as close as America and Israel offer such openly divergent public descriptions of the situation, one is left with at least two possible interpretations. There could be a genuine rift, in which America is telling Israel not to strike while publicly denying it. Or America and Israel could actually be on the same page, while expressing public disagreement as a way of confusing the Iranians.

This is the context in which we view the report in Monday’s Jerusalem Post, picking up an account in the Netherlands newspaper De Telegraaf that the Dutch intelligence service, AVID, had, as the Post put it, “called off an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran’s weapons industry due to an assessment that a US attack on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is imminent.” The report said the Lowlanders reckoned that America’s strike would be carried out by unmanned aircraft “within weeks.”

If indeed America is itself planning to strike at Iran, it might explain why it is asking the Israelis for restraint, as Mr. Barak suggested. As for the regime in Tehran, now it must defend not only against attacks from Israel but also from America and even from special operations from the Netherlands. But our own bet is that the likelihood of an allied strike against Iranian nuclear facilities is inversely proportional to the talk about it.

That is, the more Ms. Rice and Mr. Barak and the Dutch announce their intentions of such a strike, the less likely it is actually to happen, because such talk reduces the chance of the tactical surprise that would improve such a mission’s chances of success. It would be a close call which would be more shaken up by such an attack: the Iranian nuclear program, or the American presidential race.

Then there is the question of Democratic appeasement — that is, the disinclination of the Democratic-led Congress to support military moves against Iran by an outgoing administration. Senator Biden, who is a kind of one-winged hawk, warned that if President Bush bombs Iran without first gaining congressional approval Mr. Biden would move for impeachment, an announcement that caused appreciative chuckles among the mullahs in Iran.

It’s not just constitutional niceties, either. Mr. Biden’s position also came up on Monday when Israeli Army Radio and the newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Mr. Biden told Israeli officials in closed conversations three years ago that he was firmly opposed to an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and that “Israel would likely have to come to terms with a nuclear Iran.” According to the report, Mr. Biden said he opposed “opening an additional military and diplomatic front,” even though he reckons that “It’s doubtful if the economic sanctions will be effective.”

The report elicited, later that same day, a denial from the vice presidential candidate’s press secretary, who released a statement saying the story was a “lie,” that Mr. Biden “takes a back seat to no one when it comes to protecting the relationship between Israel and the U.S.,” and that “Senator Biden has consistently stated — publicly and privately — that a nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat to Israel and the United States and that we must prevent a nuclear Iran.”

But a back seat is just where Messrs. Biden and Obama have landed in respect of the Iran debate. To try to salvage some kind of reputation in respect of national security, the Democratic Party’s candidate for vice president is reduced to calling Israeli Army Radio and the most serious liberal newspaper in Israel of lying. We don’t doubt Mr. Biden would prefer a world in which Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. What remains unanswered is the question of how far he is willing to go to stop it. It will be something to see whether Mr. Biden gets trapped into this position when he gets into his debate with Governor Palin.